Every day, when Mom arrives home from work, she does a head count. There’s Tessa over there on the couch. Pia’s probably upstairs napping in the tower. There’s Viola sitting on Dad’s kitchen table chair. There’s . . . hmm, where’s Quint? He’s not in his fort. That’s odd.
Sure, the official start of spring is . . . *checks calendar* . . . 18 days away but it sure felt nice here this past end of week. Mom was outside figuring out what needs to be transplanted or dug up over the coming month and happily reports she has less garden chores to do than last year’s end of summer Transplant Bonanza.
One of the fruits of her labor are these petite orange crocus that actually came up. Mom found a single heavily discounted bag of mostly dried up and smashed crocus bulbs last fall at the grocery store and feeling sorry for the bunch, paid the $1.99 and hoped for the best. Now, go multiply, you cute crocus.
Elsewhere, tulips tucked in under overwintered Alyssum Basket of Gold, are popping up. Any minute now, the slugs will move in, except this year, Mom’s better prepared. Don’t tell that Alyssum it was supposed to be an annual in our area four years ago. It handled last month’s snow just fine. Clearly, we have a micro-climate thing happening here.
“The trees are doing what??” neighborhood cat KeeKee (formerly known as Mr. MewMew), wonders what Mom’s blathering on about. We haven’t had too many visitors this winter, meaning 3 cats and 3 raccoons as opposed to last winter’s 5 cats and countless raccoons. We’re worried about those outside cats and raccoons getting bird flu because our backyard always has lots of birds. Our neighbors aren’t worried about it at all. Hmm, well, okay . . .
We had one casualty over the winter. This power transformer box located way back in the darkest spot in the garden fell off its post, the screws rusted completely away and the post itself loose and too wobbly to reattach to. Maybe that’s why our Christmas lights kept tripping the GFCI power surge protector. Gee, you think? Adding this to the list of things to get fixed.
Meanwhile, our anteater is smacking her lips over what we all have to assume are ant snacks. We’re not going to say where we are on the ant front just yet because we don’t want to jinx it. Let’s move along.
Not too much else going on here. We suspect in a month we’ll be up to our earlobes in buds and flowers. Mom will have gotten the flower beds close to perfection with every dead leaf and twig and any and all winter debris removed, what she calls “Disneyland-ifying the flower beds.”
Decades ago, Mom visited Disneyland in California and was enamored with how neat and perfect every flower bed and landscaped area seemed to be. She was very impressionable then and the images stuck with her. She knew that level of neatness was created by gardening crews who worked everyday when the park was closed, and is thankful she only has a front and back yard, not acres to maintain. And though she’s just one person, each year she’s always proud of her perfectionist garden cleanup.
It might be warm and dry next week. Let the clean up begin!
